


Winner

by wingeddserpent



Category: Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Canon Related, Community: hc_bingo, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-14
Updated: 2013-07-14
Packaged: 2017-12-20 05:06:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/883278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wingeddserpent/pseuds/wingeddserpent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuffie hates boats. Tifa tries to take the edge off a little.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winner

**Author's Note:**

> For my "nausea" square.

They talk her onto a boat. Barely even know her, just picked her up in the forest a few days ago, and they talk her onto a boat to chase Sephiroth. If she didn’t know for a fact they had super great materia that made her mouth water just to _think_ about, she totally wouldn’t even bother because Yuffie Kisaragi does not do boats. She does not do boats or planes or airships or anything like that. Except, to be perfectly honest, there's not a whole lot she wouldn't do for materia. She kinda needs it.

Of course, the second the hunk of metal starts moving her whole stomach just twists and churns its way up to her throat and she’s fucking gagging, and Aeris, in her dumb SOLDIER uniform, stares at her with this dumb expression like “I can’t believe this arghhhh” and Yuffie tries for a smirk, but it’s really hard to be cool and suave when you’re like negative four seconds from blowing chunks.

So she clamps her teeth together so hard her jaw aches but there’s no way she’s gonna make it. Cloud’s not too stingy to give her a tranquilizer, which is cool, and she takes it as soon as he gives it to her. It kinda helps. Her stomach stops trying to projectile-ize itself thirty feet away, but she keeps her head between her knees.

Time drifts as she focuses on taking deep, calm breaths, eyes shut, like her—like Godo—had taught her years and years ago, when she was a kid and not a badass. Hell, who’s she kidding? She was born a badass. 

The tranq wears off after awhile—fuck, how long’re they gonna be on this pleasure cruise? And her stomach lodges itself in her throat, bubbling like some kind of terrible dragon erupting from her insides, and that’s it, that’s all she wrote. Thank gawd she brought a bag, because she’s like, always prepared, because, you know, badass, and she’s throwing her guts up into the thing and it’s super gross, because nobody had told her about the _boat_ and Tifa had made something called huevos rancheros, which were awesome, but now eggs and beans coming back up is fucking nasty. 

She feels a hand on her lower back and then it’s adrenaline coursing through her, because shit, they’ve been discovered, and hell if she dies on a Shinra boat far from home. “Hey, relax, it’s me,” Tifa whispers, “Cloud said you were sick, I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Why?” she asks, when she’s got a second where she’s not spewing up partially digested food.

The hand rubs small circles in her back and Yuffie tenses, because, seriously, like, why the fuck is this lady feeling up her back? Does she have like, a secret back fetish or something? Is this how it ends, barfing eggs and beans and whatever on a Shinra boat, in a tasteless blue uniform, with some chick molesting her? She heaves as Tifa says, “I was worried. You’re—well, you’re pretty young to be wandering off by yourself, aren’t you?” Yuffie is totally imagining a smile in Tifa’s voice, people with boobs that big definitely don’t know how to smile. “Are you all by yourself?”

She has to wait until she throws up more of Tifa’s breakfast—take that, pervert! See what Yuffie thinks of your awful breakfast?—before she can croak out, “Yeah, yeah, touchy feely bullshit. ‘Kay, seriously, what do you want?”

Tifa sighs, rubs her back a little more firmly, like Yuffie is fucking irritating, Tifa is totally the perv groping a minor's back, so there. For a bit, Tifa doesn’t say anything, which is kinda great, because Yuffie’s running out of food to hurl, down to the last bean, which, _grossness_. 

“We still haven’t found Sephiroth… Have you been drinking water, Yuffie? I’d give you another tranq, but you’re so tiny… I think it might do more harm than good…” the hand stills for a second, before resuming its terrible groping of doom and then there’s another hand brushing her sweaty gross hair out of her face, and ew ew. Tifa wears gloves because she’s actually pretty good at martial arts, but Yuffie’s sweat is gonna be all in the leather and Tifa’s gonna have to wash those things. 

Yuffie manages to lift a hand to flip Tifa the bird. Fuck you very much, Yuffie hasn’t needed a mother since she was four, thanks. 

“I’m helping you whether you like it or not,” Tifa snaps, suddenly combing fingers through Yuffie’s hair, steel in her voice, and Yuffie Kisaragi doesn’t fucking take that tone from anybody—“You’d been living in the forest by yourself for a long time, hadn’t you?”

And all the anger’s gone from Tifa’s voice, she almost sounds sad. Traitor that it is, Yuffie’s stomach heaves again, and she’s barfing up food she doesn’t remember eating and bile, totally useless and defenseless against Tifa’s damn touching, her damn prying. If she could, she’d totally start screaming, because she super hates perverts, has met way too many perverts in her life, seriously. 

“Look, boobs, fuck you, fuck off,” Yuffie growls out, her voice all scratchy from being scoured out with stomach acid, “It’s none of your business, okay? I’m blowing chunks, not fucking dying.”

The fucking bitch laughs at her, like, not just a little giggle or anything, but full out gasps of laugher, and Yuffie is so done. If they didn’t have materia primo, Yuffie would seriously cut a bitch. This bitch, in fact, because, okay yeah, Tifa’s hand is nice and warm on her back, and it does sort of feel nice to have the knots in her lower back rubbed out. This can never happen again, she decides, as she starts coughing and choking, stomach rolling over and over in her throat. “Yuffie, you need to relax,” Tifa says, “It’s okay. Listen, if you keep tensing up like that, it’s just going to be worse. You’re my teammate. Just—let me look out for you, okay? We need you at your best if Sephiroth is here.”

Yuffie scoffs and regrets it when she pukes some more. Gawd. Ew. Thankfully, Tifa just gives her another bag and Yuffie kinda wishes she had a damn bucket. 

“I know what it’s like. I was on my own when I was about your age. You’ve just—got to let go of this idea you can’t accept help from anyone. No matter what’s happened to you… there are still good people in the world. That’s why we’re doing this, trying to bring Sephiroth to justice for everything he’s done.”

She doesn’t even bother that with a response. Tifa doesn’t fucking get it. It’s not like she’s the princess of a country; it’s not like she saw her home taken over by Shinra. She doesn’t know everything Yuffie has lost, everything she has to fight tooth and fucking claw to get back. So what if she’s sitting here and throwing up her guts. Doesn’t matter. Wutai is everything and Yuffie has never needed to be coddled. Born a badass, and all that. Badasses never ever need to be coddled. 

But it does feel nice, is a base primal way, to have somebody just—touching her, not attacking her or anything, just trying to help. She honestly doesn’t remember the last time anybody—she shakes her head, violently, and regrets it, regrets it. Tifa just sighs. “Look, Yuffie. I get it, I do. I really do. But just—you shouldn’t keep making yourself suffer.”

“Thanks for the advice,” she growls out, “Look, just… Go back to lusting after Cloud, okay? I wanna be by myself.”

Tifa brushes Yuffie’s sweat-slick hair out of her face and for the first time, she looks Yuffie in the eyes, her wine-colored eyes all-sad and she looks older than she should, lady’s what, 20-something? Yuffie grimaces. “Drink some water when you can. I’ll check on you later.” And there’s something like defeat in her voice and it should make Yuffie feel good, after all, that means she won, right?

But she doesn’t feel like a winner as she hears Tifa walk away. No, she doesn’t think she’s been this lonely since that first night she’d spent after leaving Wutai.

Screw Tifa, Yuffie is always a goddamn winner.


End file.
